Unfortunately, the PTO’s response comes a little over two weeks after Red Hat entered into a settlement with Firestar. Although the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Quanta Computers v. LG Electronics protects downstream Red Hat licensees through the application of the doctrine of patent exhaustion it doesn’t insulate others in the open source community from future actions by Firestar. It’s our hope that the rejection of the patent through the reexamination process will become final in August eliminating this threat for all members of the open source world.

Speculation: could Firestar reduce its claims in order to entice Red Hat to cough out money, knowing that the software patent in question would soon be invalidated?

IBM filed an amicus brief in Bilski arguing for a principled approach based on the precedents of the Supreme Court. IBM’s test would limit the scope of patentable subject matter to avoid granting exclusive rights to non-technological business methods while broadly allowing for protection of new technological advances. Under IBM’s proposed test, a patentable process must either (1) be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) cause transformation or reduction of an article to a different state or thing, and in either instance produce technologically beneficial results. IBM’s approach is not only consistent with the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, it is also substantially consistent with prevailing international standards, including those of the EPO and its member states.

MR. OLSON [For Microsoft]: The ’580 patent is a program, as I understand it, that’s married to a computer, has to be married to a computer in order to be patented.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You can’t patent, you know, on-off, on-off code in the abstract, can you?
MR. OLSON: That’s correct, Justice Scalia.
JUSTICE SCALIA: There needs to be a device.
MR. OLSON: An idea or a principle, two plus two equals four can’t be patented. It has to be put together with a machine and made into a usable device.

What Else is New

The GNOME Board of Directors works for IBM and/or Microsoft at GitHub; it’s not entirely surprising that despite opposition from some GNOME developers the head of the GNOME Foundation, preceded by people who have since defected to Microsoft, described Dr. Richard Stallman as “reprehensible” and called for him to step down (from his very own thing, never mind the “G” in GNOME standing for GNU)

Principled, opinionated, self-governing individuals aren't any good for corporations looking to not only use their projects but to totally control those projects (copyleft licences such as GPL already make that hard enough for them, so it takes more time for legal 'hacks' such as software patents, "clown computing" and GitHub)

Certain groups that claim to represent the values of "Open Source" are in fact promoting the interests of Microsoft, GitHub etc. (i.e. monopoly or "open" as in a bunch of monopolies like Facebook and Microsoft sharing code snippets/resources over GitHub)

Torvalds and others who are middle-aged (or older) males are often torpedoed using weakly-backed allegations (or insinuations/innuendo) of sexism; that does not seem to matter and won't matter when they treat men the same (or worse)

Linus Torvalds was not fully canceled; nor was Richard Stallman, who's still heading the GNU Project (under conditions specified by those looking to oust him; people who code for Microsoft GitHub and many IBM employees)

General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Board of Red Hat, explains (keynote in 2011 Red Hat Summit/JBoss World) that he was introduced to the system as part of a military campaign; it basically helped war, not antiwar

Techrights examines Red Hat’s (IBM’s) hypocritical claims about the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman back when IBM was the “big scary monopolist”; IBM employees were prominent among those pushing to oust Stallman from the GNU Project, which he founded, as well

The (in)famous letter against Richard Stallman (RMS), which was signed by many Red Hat employees with Microsoft (GitHub) accounts, doesn’t look particularly good in light of recent revelations/findings; it increasingly looks like IBM simply wants Microsoft-hosted and “permissively” licensed stuff, just like another project it announced yesterday and another that it promoted yesterday

One might not expect this from a so-called 'charity'; the Gates Foundation's critics are often met with unprecedented aggression, threats and retribution, which make one wonder if it's really a charity or a greedy cult of personalities (Bill and Melinda)

The assault on the media by Bill Gates is a subject not often explored by the media (maybe because a lot of it is already bribed by him); but we're beginning to gather new and important evidence that explains how critics are muzzled (even fired) and critical pieces spiked, never to see the light of day anywhere

Microsoft buying GitHub does not demonstrate that Microsoft loves Open Source (GitHub is not Open Source and may never be) but that it loves monopoly and coercion (what GitHub is all about and why it must be rejected)

The European Patent Office (EPO) keeps granting fake patents that cause a lot of real harm (examiners are pressured to play along and participate in this unlawful agenda); nobody is happy except those who profit from needless, frivolous lawsuits

After contributing to the cancellation of Richard Stallman (RMS) based on some falsehoods perpetuated in the media we're seeing the sort of thing one might expect from IBM (more so now that it totally controls Fedora and RHEL)